We've been playing a lot of games at our house the last few days. It started after Sandy gave us "What's Gnu?" last week. You can find it on amazon here. It's $29.99, Sandy found it at a thrift store or garage sale. I don't think I'd pay $30 for this one, but if you come across it, at a thrift store, I'd definitely snag this deal. Or you could always ask the grandparents to buy it for Christmas. :)
Then I found another game, by the same company, called "Picture Link". You can find it here. It's not sold on amazon, but it's listed at $4.99 by an outside seller. Not sure what shipping would be. I only paid $1.99 at Goodwill. But you could easily make your own version at home. It's similar to bingo, but instead of drawing cards, each player picks which picture they would like to cover up. The goal is to get from one side of the board to the other, of the same color. The board is shaped like a hexagon (so it has 6 sides), and the pictures spots are smaller hexagons. This is the first game Kora has been able to play with us. It's great for Kees's age, because there's strategy involved, and it's great for Kora's age because she is learning new vocabulary as we play. Directional words, colors, and the names of the objects. It's also great for building fine motor skills. I think you could easily make your own version at home. Everyone needs to have the same number of spaces, and the exact same pictures, but not placed in the same spots. If I were going to make my own game like this, I 'd just draw a big rectangular or square playing board, and use different stickers in each space. You could easily do letters, or numbers, or even just color the squares. Dollar Tree has the mosaics. They are similar to marbles, but flat on one side, those would work great for the game pieces. But you could also use beans, cut out shapes, beads, rocks, lego pieces, or anything you like.
Playing games is such a fun family activity, not to mention a great way for your child to learn to take turns plus whatever skill the game emphasizes.
A few other learning games:
1. War (greater than/less than)
2. Go Fish (number recognition) You could easily make your own cards out of index cards and do addition problems with the answer as the "match", or sight words, letters, shapes, ANYTHING!
3. Memory Match (memory)
4. Puzzles (spatial reasoning)
5. Toss Up (making tens, risk assesment) If you've never played this game, it's fun! If you don't want to pay $8-ish dollars to buy it, you can get 10 dice from Dollar Tree and use permanent marker to color the sides of the dice or colored dot stickers. Each dice has 3 green sides, 2 yellow, and 1 red. As long as you don't have ALL red, you get to keep rolling the dice, trying to get to 100. If you end up rolling all red, you lose your points. (I'm sure I'm not explaining this very well, but my kids are asking to play a game with me. IRONIC! You can find directions online)
6. War using 2 (or more) dice (addition). If the left two dice is player #1, they have 6, and the player on the right, player #2 has 9. So player 2 would win this round.
7. Tangrams or Mighty Mind (spatial reasoning, shapes, colors). There are tons of free printable versions online, just google search "tangrams".
Of course I could list games all day, but these are a few that came to mind. Whether you're a parent, teacher, aunt/uncle, older sibling, or grandparent. Playing games with kids is not only fun, but a great way to help them learn new concepts. Don't feel like you have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff either, check thrift stores, make your own games, and look online. Just a deck of cards or a couple dice, can easily provide hours of learning fun.
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